Instructor

Textbook:

• online: Designing and Building Parallel Programs by Ian Foster

Course prerequisites: CSC 246 or CSC 451 or CSC 501 (Operating Systems).
Helpful: CSC 253 (C and C++ for Java Programmers), CSC 234 (Computer Organization & Assembly Language).

Course purpose: This class prepares you to understand advanced research issues in parallel programs. You will be introduced to parallel systems as well as various advanced topics. The material will cover numerous research papers besides the textbook. Current research will be presented by students and discussed to give a better understanding of open issues in parallel systems.

Course objectives: By the end of the course, you should be able to do the following things:

• Parallel computing basics: understand the concepts of parallel computing, parallel systems' architecture, and parallel algorithms.
• Parallel programming: understand the two popular parallel programming paradigms (message passing and shared memory); learn to design and implement parallel programs using popular libraries in these paradigms (MPI and OpenMP); use parallel execution environment to compile parallel programs and submit parallel jobs; perform basic performance benchmarking and analysis.
• Parallel programs' performance: understand major performance issues for parallel systems and programs; critique different implementation choices; comprehend the limitations of parallelization in terms of efficiency and scalability; apply performance evaluation and analysis techniques to one's own programming projects.
• Research topics: reiterate hot topics in research on parallel computing; judge the relevance and impact of novel approaches on the field; present recent results in a comprehensive manner; identify open problems; prototype solutions to selected hot topics and open problems; demonstrate the benefits of such implementations by methodological evaluations.